


A Place To Call Home

by Burning_Nightingale



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Chance Meetings, Developing Relationship, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6309553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/pseuds/Burning_Nightingale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coats doesn't believe in coincidence, but he won't turn down a good thing once he's found it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place To Call Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThreeWhiskeyLunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/gifts).



> I tried for fluff? I hope I achieved some; I'm not very good at it. I hope you enjoy!

The only thing that accurately describes the beginning of their relationship is ‘coincidence’.

(Some might call it ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’, but Coats has long since stopped believing in such things).

Steve Cortez is first introduced to Coats as ‘Commander Shepard’s shuttle pilot’, but they’ve met before. Or rather, they have seen each other before. Cortez’s injuries in the shuttle crash Coats rescued the Commander from put him in the hospital, and Coats has spent many off-duty hours visiting friends and squad members in the hospital since the end of the war.

It was coincidence, of course, that the Lieutenant was in the same hospital, the same ward in fact, as some of Coats’ friends.

His designation as the Commander’s shuttle pilot leaves Cortez at a bit of a loose end, though everyone is careful not to say it. There’s no need for a Commander to have a shuttle pilot when she’s officially MIA, after all, but no one wants to think about that fact for too long. Nor do they want to think about the fact that the entire flight deck Cortez is still assigned commander of has disappeared into space somewhere along with the rest of the _Normandy_ and her crew.

All in all, a difficult position to be in.

Their first official introduction is when Cortez arrives to fix his shuttle.

 His squad are around the side of the vehicle, taking a break and ribbing their pilot about his rusty skills, despite the rather accomplished landing he managed to pull off when their engine stalled in mid-air. They were flying low, luckily, but it was still an impressive feat.

Cortez frowns slightly when Coats idly says as much. “Yeah, no, it was a good thing he’s so quick-thinking. Just that the crash landing hasn’t done much for this bird.” He sighs and gets to his feet. “This is some pretty heavy duty damage; she won’t be flying anywhere for a while.”

Coats was afraid he was going to say that. “Well, my boys are getting too soft, being shuttled around in the air. ‘Bout time they got some exercise.”

This, at least, raises a smile from the Lieutenant. “They’ll love that.”

(Coats comes to love that, that small, wry smile).

Coats makes a habit of keeping his squad’s vehicles in good repair, and naturally this means spending some time in the garage. Cortez just happens to be assigned to the same one that handles his maintenance.

Coincidence, of course.

“You keep this in better repair than most of the junk they haul in here,” Cortez says approvingly of his Mako. He’s levering up the hood to get a good look at the engine.

“You do a lot of vehicle work before this?” Coats asks.

“Mostly fighters. I almost never worked on the Makos, but hey,” Cortez shrugs, “they need every pair of hands they can get, and I’m learning.” Deep within the machinery, something sparks. “Er. Slowly.”

Coats laughs.

There’s no news of Shepard or the _Normandy_ , a fact which weights heavy on everyone’s minds. Vigils are held, both by those who think Shepard and her crew are dead, and those who don’t.

Cortez comes down with the other machine shop boys to the makeshift pub set up in a partially repaired old building, where a wrinkled prune of a man and a boy who looks no more than a teenager run a roaring trade selling the questionable alcohol they brew in stills in the back. Shepard and her ultimate fate are a topic of much discussion, but they are a subject on which Cortez stays mum.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” he tells Coats one night, late in the evening when everyone’s had a bit too much. “Sometimes I think deciding either way will just make it less likely they’ll all come home.”

Coats just nods; he can understand unfounded superstition. Making it through the Reaper War was an exercise in belief despite every possible odd being stacked against you. He knows.

He can’t quite pinpoint when their relationship begins. All he knows is, he was contemplating how to show interest – hard to ask a guy out to dinner when all the restaurants are rubble – and then Cortez did all the work for him.

“Dating options are kind of limited in the post-apocalypse,” he says one evening, just as Coats is about to leave the machine shop and head back to barracks. “But there’s that park they’re growing over by the river?”

_St James’ Park_ , Coats thinks, and he agrees.

Somehow, just like that, he’s roped into land management.

Coats is not a gardening man. He does not understand agriculture all that well. But Cortez – off duty Coats calls him Steve, now, and Cortez calls him Thomas – comes alive in the garden. He is animated in the machine shop, obviously at work on something he loves, but he is so calm and peaceful when he works with the plants.

(It is probably these moments, watching Cortez in his element, which lead to Coats falling in love).

They don’t have houses of their own, so they can’t move in together, but somehow even without any large occasion to mark it, they know in their own way that they’ve gotten serious. They are not – and Coats has scrupulously checked – breaking any fraternization laws, though whether his commanding officer would care or not is debatable; she always has a lot on her plate.

The rebuilding of the city moves forward slowly, but surely. Reports from the crews attempting to rebuild the mass relay are less promising, but they all try to be hopeful. There is still no news of Shepard or the _Normandy_.

Alone in a quiet corner of the park one evening, Cortez says, “Do you ever think about leaving? The military, I mean.”

Coats nods, long and slow. “Sometimes.”

“I do. I think about leaving and becoming a civilian contractor, but then,” he laughs, “what would have changed, really? I’d still do the same job, with the same people. I just wouldn’t have to wear a uniform or sleep in the barracks.”

“I’d rather sleep in the barracks than a tent,” Coats says. Most people are out of tents and into hastily repaired buildings, now, but there are still remnants of tent shanty-towns around the city.

Cortez acknowledges the point with a nod of his head. “True. But then, I feel like…something would be different. I don’t know what.”

“You’d be a civilian,” Coats says simply. “It’s always different.”

Cortez doesn’t leave the army, in the end. Eventually the pace of work picks up; finished, liveable buildings begin to appear. Construction work has started in earnest.

They don’t move into a house of their own. Coats has visions of a shared flat, potted plants, a neat little kitchen-diner, maybe a cat; but they will wait. Military personnel still have accommodation provided at the barracks, and until civilians are housed, that will be enough.

The world is returning to normal, though. Spring comes and the park blossoms, all the volunteers’ hard work paying off in the huge spread of flowers that bloom, the grass that is beginning to grow into a proper carpet again, the trees stretching small but determined branches toward the sun.

Cortez and Coats walk arm in arm down one of the paths, admiring the view. “My green thumb really came through, eh?” Coats grins, and Cortez rolls his eyes. Coats is the kind of gardener who can manage to kill a cactus.

The day is balmy and bright, but something in Coats feels restless; like he’s holding his breath, waiting for something to begin.

Running footsteps on the path behind them confirm his suspicions.

A member of his squad, running full speed toward them, though still taking care to keep to the paths and not disturb the delicate carpets of grass seeds. There is what looks like a piece of paper in his hand.

“Looks like trouble,” Cortez says, that gorgeous little wry smile back at the corner of his lips.

“Ack,” Coats rolls his neck and cracks his knuckles. “And just when I was starting to get comfortable.”

(Shepard and the _Normandy_ bring adventure in their wake, as they always have done, and thoughts of the future have to be put away a little while. But Coats holds the image in his mind; them and their little flat, where the bedroom will have sky blue walls. A little balcony; hanging vines, maybe. Two cats.

He is, after all, an expert on faith)

 

 


End file.
